Project Holodeck aims to produce best Star Trek holodeck yet

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Virtual reality is what many people (including John Carmack) see gaming will eventually become–wearing a headset and being completely immersed in the experience. One team at the University of Southern California is hoping to bring true virtual reality to gaming sooner than you think.

The team has been working on a system called Project Holodeck, which aims to re-create the holodeck from Star Trek as a fully working, 360 degree, full body virtual reality games system.

The system combines three different technologies to make the set work: the Carmack-backed Oculus Rift headset for head mounted video, the PlayStation Move controller for tracking head movement, and the Razer Hydra for tracking body movements. These three systems combined create one system that allows complete immersion in a video game. Players can move around in a personal space (i.e running on the spot), but actually in the game world they’re moving around freely in a much larger space.

Headsets like Sony’s HMZ-T1 have offered consumers an expensive glimpse of such a gaming setup, but the Holodeck team says the Oculus Rift system they use is much better and gives users full immersion, rather than just a floating TV screen. With the Oculus Rift, gamers get a stereoscopic 3D image that allows a 90 degree horizontal view and a 105 degree vertical view.

The PS Move tracks head movements and feeds this information back to the Oculus Rift where the data is used to render a virtual 3D environment for the player. The Sixense Razer Hydra is for six-axis tracking and relies on the use of buttons and analog sticks because the team recognizes your hands are the most important input system.

The game shown in the video is Dreamcast title Skies of Arcadia, but it is just for demonstration purposes and will eventually be replaced by a new game called Wild Skies being specially developed for the VR system using the Unity engine. It’s a co-op game where you pilot an airship. Using the system, players can steer the helm, fire a handgun, and use the throttle all by moving your body and hands.

The Project Holodeck team hopes to show off the tech at conventions as well as launching a Kickstarter for the project very soon.